Where Do Your Thoughts Come From?

George Osner shares this story from one of our great creative minds talking about where his ideas come from. In true web fashion, George got it from his son Jeremy <jeremy@xyris.com>, who got it from pynchon-l@waste.org and it is also archived at http://www.interesting-people.org/archive/3369.html.

Seymour Cray, father of the supercomputer, would do much of his computer design work on a fresh pad of engineering paper, frequently going through an entire pad in a day. There have been many legends that have grown up around Mr. Cray's reclusive work habits which frequently went late into the night.

John Rollwagen recounts one story of a customer who visited Mr. Cray's home in Chippewa Falls. When the man asked, 'what were the secrets of his success, Mr. Cray said, "Well, we have elves here and they help me."

When the visitor, who was a French scientist, expressed his astonishment, Mr. Cray took him to look at a tunnel that he had dug under his home. Shored up with four-by-four cedar logs, the tunnel appeared to go in random directions, at one point going straight up into Mr. Cray's lawn. (Mr. Cray later explained to Mr. Rollwagen that the tunnel had gone straight up because one day it had collapsed while he was digging it and a tree in his front yard had fallen into the tunnel.)

Mr. Cray explained to his visitor that he would work at his home on computer design problems for three hours at a stretch. When he reached a technical stumbling block, he would then retire to the tunnel where he would dig for an hour.

"While I'm digging in the tunnel the elves will often come to me with solutions to my problems," he said. Cray is often ranked with Edison, Ford, Marconi and Bell as one of the seminal thinkers, inventors and business pioneers of modern times. So, if he has idea elves that helped him, maybe we should find our own elves or idea buddies.

So, the question for this week is: Where do your ideas come from?

Send your SHORT answers to: ideas@thinksmart.com SUBJECT: IDEAS